Honduran businessmen at center of coup dispute

By MARK STEVENSON, The Associated Press
| 9:47 p.m.Sept. 26, 2009

A street vendor, wearing a T-shirt with the colors of the U.S. flag, standing in front of soldiers, waits for customers during a demonstration in support of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya inTegucigalpa, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009. Honduras' interim leader Roberto Micheletti said Friday that he won't meet face-to-face with Zelaya, but said the ousted president could leave the foreign embassy where he is holed up if some country grants him political asylum. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
— AP

A street vendor, wearing a T-shirt with the colors of the U.S. flag, standing in front of soldiers, waits for customers during a demonstration in support of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya inTegucigalpa, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009. Honduras' interim leader Roberto Micheletti said Friday that he won't meet face-to-face with Zelaya, but said the ousted president could leave the foreign embassy where he is holed up if some country grants him political asylum. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
/ AP

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras 
Die-hard supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya are increasingly turning their anger toward the country's wealthy business elite, a small but powerful cadre that largely backs the interim government officials who removed him at gunpoint three months ago.

The capital is now covered with graffiti demanding "Turks out!" – a reference to the Central American country's large number of business people of Middle Eastern descent – and on Saturday pro-Zelaya marchers lashed out at the elite's dominance over wealth in a country where millions are poor.

"They own almost the whole country," pro-Zelaya protester Arnoldo Pagoaga, a medical doctor who marched in his white uniform, said Saturday. "They're terrorists. ... They own the army, and sic it on us."

Fellow demonstrator Rafael Alegria complained that Honduras "has a large immigrant community that owns everything: commerce and industry."

"We don't really have our own economy," Alegria said. "We have to set that right."

Meanwhile, reports emerged that the business community's firm support of interim President Roberto Micheletti might be faltering somewhat amid intense international economic and diplomatic pressure – and the coup's substantially negative impact on the economy.

"There are people who say that it was a businessman" who helped Zelaya sneak back into Honduras, Micheletti told The Associated Press in an interview late Friday. He added, however, that "there are so many theories that nobody knows" if it is true.

Zelaya has said he made a 15-hour, cross-country overland journey using various vehicles to slip into the country undetected Monday. But the Spanish newspaper La Nacion reported Friday that the scion of a local media and banking family, attorney Yani Rosenthal, had lent him a helicopter to whisk him to Honduras.

Rosenthal emphatically denied the report Saturday.

"I don't even have a helicopter, much less one to lend to somebody," he said.

He did acknowledge, however, that there are divisions within Honduras' elite.

"There are differences in the upper class, just as there are in the middle class and the lower class," he said, though he added that he doesn't think they have led to a significant reduction in support for Micheletti.

While the rich haven't suffered as much as the country's impoverished majority from the near-daily curfews and cutoff of international aid, industrial and retail interests are starting to feel the pinch.

"There has been significant damage to the economy ... especially from the curfews," Rosenthal noted. Another curfew was reinstated Saturday at 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. Sunday.

Textile magnate Adolfo Facusse told the AP on Saturday that his U.S. visa was revoked this month, and other business people said they knew of colleagues who had had theirs taken away. The others spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens told foreign journalists Friday that the visas of key supporters of the de facto regime had been revoked.

If that is a tactic to make business people pressure the Micheletti government to bow to international pressure and reinstate Zelaya, it won't work, said Facusse, the head of Honduras' National Association of Industrialists.

"It is just going to annoy people," he said. While the economic disruption is taking its toll, "people are saying, as bad as things are, it would be worse under Zelaya."

The business community's support for Micheletti stems from its growing disenchantment with Zelaya, a wealthy ranching and timber baron who increasingly locked horns with business leaders as he hiked the minimum wage amid the global economic crisis, blamed the business elite for causing his country's poverty, and strengthened ties with socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

If the country can tough it out until the Nov. 29 elections and win international recognition for the vote, "we can say that Chavez was stopped here," Facusse said.

Facusse – who thinks Zelaya broke the law in an attempt to remain in power, but objects to the way he was expelled from the country – says the business community is not pressuring Micheletti to reinstate the ousted president.

But he has proposed an alternative in which foreign troops from conservative countries such as Canada, Panama or Colombia would be sent to Honduras to ensure Zelaya respects an agreement allowing him to return to office with limited powers.

Business leaders definitely have clout under Micheletti: Objections by banana companies and others whose shipping schedules have been disrupted by the constant curfews were apparently instrumental in getting the government to exempt some rural and coastal areas from the nightly shutdowns this week.

But Micheletti says he has received no pressure from the business community to show more flexibility in talks with Zelaya, who is holed up at the Brazilian Embassy along with supporters and demanding to be reinstated as president.

Negotiations to resolve the country's political standoff are at a standstill. Zelaya has said that an envoy of the interim government with whom he met Wednesday night took "an extremely hard" stand and he called the government's positions "totally outside of any possibility of agreement."

Hopes for international mediation also faded Friday when Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who mediated previous talks, announced that Micheletti's government had rejected a visit by a commission of foreign ministers meant to help break the stalemate.

Government spokesman Rene Zepeda said interim leaders wanted Arias to visit Honduras first so they could explain the situation to him, and that the ministers would be welcome next week.

In Friday night's interview with the AP, however, Micheletti suggested the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. He said both the foreign ministers and Arias were now welcome to come to Honduras. None of them arrived Saturday.

Previous negotiations moderated by Arias broke down after Micheletti's government refused to accept a plan that would allow Zelaya to return to the presidency with limited powers and prohibit him from attempting to revise the constitution.

Zelaya was removed by the military at gunpoint on the morning of June 28 after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest on charges of treason and abuse of authority for repeatedly ignoring court orders to drop plans for a referendum on rewriting the constitution.

But the coup has drawn international condemnation, including from the United States, and world leaders have insisted that Micheletti restore Zelaya to the presidency and let him serve out his term, which ends in January.

Micheletti has refused, saying that presidential elections in November will bring an end to the crisis. He has pledged to arrest Zelaya if he leaves the Brazilian Embassy but his government has promised not to enter the compound to go after him.